


Reliquary

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Series: Some Lost ficlets [1]
Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5740609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Years ago, he taught himself to steal without actually taking things.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reliquary

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally posted to livejournal, 2009. Request was for poetry, but it turned into prose, and the prompt was the title.)

Sawyer hoards. But, his life a constant divestment, until now there has been only one place for him to accumulate anything. I don't, of course, mean his heart. Long ago, that was shut up tight like a tomb.

Sawyer's mind saves him daily where his nerves or guts might make of him a fool. It tells him to go to what's left of the plane and gather what's there, survival to sell to the highest bidder. A man who has been everyone but himself, here he sits among the trappings of everyone's lives. But this is not his flotsam, for he has none, at least not that anyone could pick up and slip into a pocket.

Years ago, he taught himself to steal without actually taking things. Instead, things came to him and turned to money. Everything was liquid and liquidation. Easy come, easy go. Slipping out of town, out of character, like a sharp knife between the ribs. A man travels easier with nothing save the clothes on his back. The problem is the skin under the clothes and the bones under the skin and the mind rattling in the skull. For it was not always easy to come or to go.

He could, if he cared to, recall them all, at least the long cons: every pair of eyes, every span of lower back he learned to fit his hand across just so. But then again, he could tell you what Mister Sawyer's eyes looked like, too, and that's more than he cares to do.

After all, the island has no mirrors, none, anyway, but idle time and the prospect of forever. He sees it as his gaze passes down long stretches of blue and green and, nearer, white. That bone-blank sand especially worries him, like it worries the dark, slimy, closed shell of the oysters that wash ashore, and who knows what the hell goes on inside them since God made the defense without guaranteeing a pearl.


End file.
